Category: Blogs/Weblogs

On Monday, November 25, 2013, we’ll celebrate the 12th birthday of this personal blog of mine.

It’s gone through many difference phases over those years – beginning initially as a simply weblog linking to stories I found interesting (a very common use of Twitter these days is doing exactly that), starting what evolved separately into PaymentsNews.com, and then a transition to more of my photography passion as that interest grew in importance over the last few years.

I just took a look back at the most popular web pages here on my blog during the last twelve months of 2012. The most popular pages – based on page views – weren’t written this year – but they’ve stood the test of time – at least as far as Google and the other search engines are concerned.

A Floating Faucet Fountain (Jun 13, 2009) – One of those fun stories that brings back childhood memories of home shows and the like!

Look at that list – no posts from 2012 made the top 10! It’s kinda crazy how long the long tail is. In the case of my blog, the top 3 posts accounted for over 50% of this year’s page views. The remaining 40+% were spread out among hundreds of other posts. I wonder how this distribution might change in 2013?

As we’re wrapping up 2011, I took a look back at what posts on this blog generated the most page views during 2011. Here’s the top twelve list (in honor of 2012!) – along with my commentary on each post:

Next week, this little blog of mine turns ten years old. In some ways, this seems hard for me to believe. It actually feels like I’ve been writing here forever – but, of course, that can’t be! Perhaps it’s the sheer number of blog posts I’ve done over the years – many more over on PaymentsNews.com than here – but plenty here, on my recipe blog ScottsKitchen.com, on InMenlo.com, PaymentsViews.com and a few others.

Adding them all up, I’m sure I’m in the 10,000 hour club that Malcolm Gladwell talked about in Outliers: The Story of Success when it comes to blogging!

The first presence for my personal website in the Wayback Machine is dated December 5, 1998 – and, from the text on that page, looks like it was originally posted on October 19, 1998 – over thirteen years ago. Ah, those were the days!.

So, as we think about things to be thankful at this time of year, I’m thankful for blogging and how it’s worked magic in my life. By writing, it helps me clarify my muddled thoughts. By sharing with others, I often hear from them – even from strangers. And I welcome the increase in serendipity in my life that blogging contributes to in a meaningful way. Maybe writing here isn’t the best thing I’ve ever done, but it’s plenty good! And many thanks to those who inspired me to write and taught me many new things along the way. Lots to be thankful for!

Joel’s blog “The Book Designer” is a wonderful resource for those interested in book design, self publishing and more. You’ll find him on Twitter as @jfbookman. In his presentation, Joel told of his experiences having started blogging just 15 months ago – and doing so has opened up a whole new range of opportunities for him – a great story told with great advice for other authors!

As Joel and I were talking, he pulled out his iPhone 4 which had a little device attached to it – something called “The Glif“. The Glif slips over the edge of the iPhone 4 and provides a number of ways you can “stand up” the iPhone. In addition, for us photography nuts, it’s got a tripod socket – so that you can use your iPhone on a tripod. I ordered one immediately – from my iPhone naturally!

Turns out there’s a wonderful story behind the development of this little device. After prototyping their design, the founders, Tom Gerhardt and Dan Provost, used KickStarter to raise the initial capital required to launch – and to find an initial market. KickStartr is a great way to publicize interesting projects and raise capital “from the crowd.” If the story is good enough and you reach the project threshold, funding happens – if not, it doesn’t. Simple but powerful idea! The Glif is a great example of KickStartr in action.

I’m always a bit amazed by the statistics as to how readers arrive at my blog here. All of this is strongly influenced by the search engines – what they think is important here coupled with what searchers are searching for.

While much of what I write about is photography-related, it turns out that’s not the primary driver – at least over the last 90 days. While the photography-related posts are important – they’re not the MOST important.

Looking for a couple of additional simple recipes for great tasting meals that are super easy to prepare?

Be sure to try this Easy Oven Roasted Salmon recipe based upon Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. We cooked this one again last night using fresh salmon filets from Trader Joe’s (Norwegian, farm raised) and it was superb! I used kosher salt and fresh ground pepper to season the salmon – along with a liberal sprinkling of one of my favorites, Penzey’s Sunny Spain (a salt-free lemon pepper blend), and a bit of Szechuan Pepper Salt (I seem to be using this on everything lately!). We did some stir-fry veggies to accompany – with a bit of balsamic for flavor.

Two weeks ago I transitioned this personal blog of mine from TypePad to WordPress – and, in the process, began to get back into the swing of things in terms of regular posts. There’s something important about doing a daily post, IMHO – it’s the perfect cadence for a personal blog.

This week, naturally, I fell off that wagon. Completely fell off the wagon! No posts since last Saturday! WTF, as they say? I ask myself!

As it turned out, this week was one of those “perfect storms” of work – beginning with an all-hands partners meeting offsite on Monday, a private advanced-level Payments Boot Camp on Tuesday, a regular public Payments Boot Camp on Wednesday-Thursday, capped by an intensive client work day today. Exhausted… Heck, I’m writing this to just decompress – and yo look back at what an intense week it was!

While it was an intense week, it’s like an intense workout. You’re exhausted – but it’s that good tired feeling.

Frankly, for me, our Boot Camp sessions are just a delight. As instructors, we pour ourselves into them – and we get a huge amount back from everyone who attends. They’re pretty amazing experiences – as almost everyone who comes is an expert in some aspect of the payments systems we’re teaching – so it’s a joy to be able to draw on that expertise as the teacher.

We’ve recently begun including a case study exercise – dividing into small groups to better understand the perspectives of particular stakeholders in the payments system. These discussions get the juices flowing – as there are a lot of “zero sum” issues to consider in payments.

We also like to try to close the first day of our public boot camp sessions with an entrepreneur who’s actually innovating in and around the payments space. This week, Danny Shader, CEO of PayNearMe.com, spoke to our group – and shared some of his learnings building successful companies. Danny was great – and he got LOTS of questions!

So, I’m tired tonight – but it’s a really good tired. Lots of “good stuff” went on this week – and that’s what matters. The journey is indeed the reward!

I’ve been doing a bit of looking at traffic today – web traffic that is – across both mypersonal and our Glenbrook web sites.

For my personal sites, it’s interesting that my recipes blog, ScottsKitchen.com, has been running about twice the number of page views daily that this blog receives. While I tend to think of sjl.us as my personal “hub” – the web doesn’t. It likes food (and recipes) much better! 😉

In my book, the “gold standard” for a superb recipe site is SimplyRecipes.com run by Elise Bauer. She does a wonderful job – combining great recipes with luscious food photography! The iPhone web app version of her site has come in very handy for me many times!

When I launched this new WordPress-powered version of my blog over the weekend, I quickly looked through some recent photos to find one that would be suitable for use in the header image. The one I picked, which I’ve loosely titled “Band on the Run!“, was taken on November 19, 2010, in County Wicklow in Ireland. Seems like a near perfect shot for an album cover, doesn’t it?!

We’re standing on a cliff overlooking Luggala – the Guiness estate. We had just jumped out of our tour bus (Wild Wicklow Tours – highly recommended!) and were headed over to capture the views when I snapped this photo with my Canon PowerShot S95. My Glenbrook partner Carol Coye Benson and I were in Ireland teaching our Payments in a Mobile World workshop earlier that week. That’s Carol out in front of the band in the photo!

Other Stuff

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